There is something increasingly difficult to ignore in Benue State.
Governor Hyacinth Alia is a Catholic priest and an unmarried man. Yet his administration now has an officially designated Coordinator of the Office of the First Lady, Hon. Scholastica Terngu Ben-Sor.
And this is no longer simply a matter of protocol or an honorary title.
The Governor has now commissioned a dedicated office complex for the Coordinator, Office of the First Lady, inside Government House, Makurdi. In announcing the commissioning, Governor Alia himself described the facility as a place for coordinating, administering and implementing programmes for women, children, families and vulnerable persons across the state.
That changes the nature of the debate.
The question is no longer merely: Who should be called Benue's First Lady?
The more important constitutional question is:
Where does the legal authority for this office come from?
And if the answer is that the office is simply an administrative creation of the Governor, another question immediately follows:
Can an administrative decision create a permanent-looking public institution, with an office complex, personnel and potentially public expenditure, when the Constitution and state legislation do not establish such an office?
That is the precedent problem.
The Constitution does not create a First Lady
The starting point is surprisingly straightforward.
The 1999 Constitution, as amended, does not establish an office called the First Lady at either the federal or state level.
The Constitution establishes the Governor and vests the executive powers of a state in that office. Section 5(2) provides that the executive powers of a state are vested in the Governor and may be exercised directly or through the Deputy Governor, Commissioners or officers in the public service, subject to the Constitution and laws made by the State House of Assembly.
There is no equivalent constitutional provision creating a First Lady.
There is no constitutional oath for a First Lady.
There is no constitutional salary.
There is no constitutional job description.
There is no constitutional procedure for appointing or removing a First Lady.
And there is no constitutional provision giving a Governor's wife, or any other woman, executive authority over government programmes.
This is not merely an academic argument.
In Elder Achuba & Anor v Governor of Kogi State & Anor, the National Industrial Court of Nigeria expressly noted that the office of the Governor's wife, like the office of the President's wife, has no constitutional function. The court nevertheless recognised that such offices have become established in practice and that official support has historically been provided to them.
That distinction matters enormously.
Something can exist as political convention without being a constitutionally created public office.
Nigeria has lived with that ambiguity for decades.
But Benue's situation introduces an unusual twist.
Normally, the person occupying the unofficial First Lady space is actually the Governor's wife.
Here, there is no Governor's wife.
Instead, there is a Governor who is a Catholic priest and therefore does not have a spouse occupying that conventional position.
The administration has consequently appointed a government official to coordinate an office associated with a person who does not exist.
That is where the legal and institutional questions become much sharper.
Who is Scholastica Ben-Sor?
There is an important fact that should not be lost in the controversy.
Scholastica Terngu Ben-Sor did not suddenly appear as a ceremonial First Lady.
She is a government appointee.
Governor Alia appointed her as Special Adviser on Women Affairs in 2023. The appointment was reported among the Governor's appointments of Special Advisers.
She has subsequently functioned as the state's Coordinator of the Renewed Hope Initiative and Coordinator of activities associated with the Office of the First Lady.
In June 2026, when controversy erupted over her designation, the Benue government defended the arrangement by stressing that Governor Alia, being a Catholic priest, has no First Lady and that there is no law requiring the Deputy Governor's wife to assume the role.
That defence is actually revealing.
Because the government itself appears to acknowledge two separate things:
First: Alia has no wife who can conventionally occupy the First Lady position.
Second: the Deputy Governor's wife is not automatically entitled to the position.
Both propositions may be correct.
But neither proposition answers the central constitutional question.
They only answer who should not occupy the position.
They do not establish the legal existence of the position itself.
The Deputy Governor's wife was not the answer
The controversy became particularly interesting because Benue has a woman who could, by political convention, have been used as the state's female ceremonial figure: Mrs. Christie Ada Sam-Ode, wife of Deputy Governor Sam Ode.
But the Deputy Governor's office subsequently made the position clear.
Mrs. Sam-Ode is the wife of the Deputy Governor, not the First Lady of Benue State.
The statement also said that she had no claim to the First Lady position and that the Governor had the prerogative to assign responsibilities within his administration.
This is important because it destroys one popular assumption.
There is apparently no constitutional rule saying:
If the Governor has no wife, the Deputy Governor's wife automatically becomes First Lady.
There is no such provision in the Constitution.
But it also raises another question.
If the Deputy Governor's wife cannot constitutionally become First Lady, why was the solution not simply to leave the office vacant?
Why was the solution instead to create a staffed governmental structure around the concept of a First Lady?
That is where the Benue experiment becomes constitutionally interesting.
The Governor can appoint an adviser — but that is not the same thing
This is where the argument requires some legal precision.
It would be incorrect to say that Governor Alia has no authority to appoint Scholastica Ben-Sor.
Section 196 of the Constitution specifically permits a State Governor to appoint Special Advisers to assist him in performing his functions.
But subsection 196(2) contains an important limitation: the number of Special Advisers and their remuneration and allowances must be prescribed by law or by resolution of the State House of Assembly.
That means there is a perfectly legitimate constitutional route for having a Special Adviser on Women Affairs.
Indeed, Ben-Sor's original appointment as Special Adviser can be understood within that framework.
The problem begins when the government moves from:
“Special Adviser to the Governor on Women Affairs”
to:
“Coordinator, Office of the First Lady.”
Those are not necessarily the same thing.
One is an identifiable advisory appointment.
The other sounds like an institutional office.
And once that institution has a dedicated building inside Government House, staff, programmes, official ceremonies and government-funded activities, the question becomes:
What legal instrument created the institution?
Was it created by an Act of the Benue State House of Assembly?
Was it established through an executive instrument?
Was it included in an approved administrative structure?
Was its funding appropriated by the House of Assembly?
What are its approved personnel positions?
What are their salaries and allowances?
What procurement process produced the office complex?
Who is accountable for the expenditure?
These are not political questions.
They are public-accountability questions.
The new building makes the issue harder to dismiss
Until recently, the government could plausibly describe the arrangement as nothing more than coordination.
But the commissioning of a dedicated office complex changes the optics and potentially the legal character of the arrangement.
Governor Alia recently commissioned the new office complex for the Coordinator, Office of the First Lady, at Government House in Makurdi. The Governor's own description said the facility would provide an environment for coordinating and administering programmes for women, children, families and vulnerable persons.
That means taxpayers are entitled to ask ordinary questions about public expenditure.
Who approved the project?
Under which budget head was it funded?
Was the project appropriated by the House of Assembly?
What was the procurement process?
What is the annual personnel cost?
How many employees work there?
Are those employees civil servants, political appointees or temporary staff?
Who pays them?
Under what establishment instrument?
None of these questions requires hostility towards Scholastica Ben-Sor.
Nor do they require an argument that women-focused programmes should not exist.
They are questions about the difference between a programme and a government institution.
Benue already has a Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Welfare.
The state also has a Commissioner responsible for that ministry.
So the government should be able to explain why programmes involving women, children and vulnerable people require a separate institutional structure called the Office of the First Lady — particularly when there is no First Lady.
The government has a legitimate argument — but it is incomplete
The strongest defence available to the Alia administration is straightforward:
The First Lady's office is not a constitutional office anyway. It has historically operated as an informal administrative convention. Therefore, appointing a Special Adviser to coordinate activities traditionally associated with the Governor's wife does not necessarily violate the Constitution.
There is some support for that position.
The National Industrial Court in the Kogi case acknowledged that offices associated with governors' wives are not constitutionally created, while also recognising the reality that such offices have historically received official support.
So the legal position is not as simple as saying:
“The Constitution does not mention First Lady, therefore everything called First Lady is automatically illegal.”
That would be too broad.
The harder and more accurate question is:
What expenditure and governmental authority can lawfully be attached to an informal office?
That is where the administration needs to provide answers.
And then there is the precedent problem
This may ultimately be more important than the present controversy.
Imagine the precedent Benue is establishing.
A future governor could be unmarried.
Another governor could be widowed.
Another could be divorced.
Another might simply choose not to involve a spouse in public affairs.
Under the Benue model, the Governor could potentially designate another individual to perform functions associated with a First Lady and establish a formal office around that person.
But what stops the next Governor from appointing a political associate?
A party loyalist?
A sister?
A daughter?
A close friend?
A prominent donor?
A traditional title holder?
Or even a person with no obvious constitutional relationship to the Governor?
If the office is merely a matter of executive discretion, then what limits the discretion?
That is precisely why constitutional systems are built around offices, powers and procedures rather than personalities.
The issue is not whether Scholastica Ben-Sor is competent.
The issue is whether the office survives the Governor who created it.
If it does, it needs a clear legal foundation.
If it does not, then the public should know that what exists is an administrative arrangement of the Alia administration, rather than a recognised office of the Benue State Government.
What about the Catholic Church?
There is also a religious dimension, although it should not be exaggerated.
The Catholic Church's own canon law provides that clerics in the Latin Church are bound to celibacy. Canon 277 speaks expressly of perfect and perpetual continence and celibacy.
The Catechism likewise states that ordained ministers of the Latin Church are normally chosen from men who live a celibate life.
But that religious rule does not determine whether Benue State can create an administrative office.
That is a matter of Nigerian constitutional and state law.
The more appropriate question for the Church would therefore be different:
Does the Diocese or ecclesiastical authority have any concern about a serving Catholic priest occupying a political office in which his administration establishes an institution modelled on the spouse of a Governor?
That is an ecclesiastical question, not a constitutional one.
I have not found a public statement from the Catholic hierarchy specifically addressing Governor Alia's creation or operation of Benue's Office of the First Lady.
Therefore, it would be irresponsible to claim that the Church has approved or condemned the arrangement without evidence.
Benue should publish the legal foundation
There is a simple way to end the controversy.
The Benue State Government should publish the instrument establishing the office.
Not a political statement.
Not a press release.
Not an explanation that the Governor has discretion.
The actual legal instrument.
If the office is simply an administrative unit attached to the Governor's Office, say so.
If Scholastica Ben-Sor is functioning solely under her existing appointment as Special Adviser on Women Affairs, say so.
If there is a House of Assembly resolution authorising the office, publish it.
If there is a law establishing it, publish the law.
If the office has staff, publish the approved establishment and remuneration framework.
If public money was used to construct the new office complex, disclose the appropriation, procurement process and cost.
That would transform the debate from social-media speculation into transparent governance.
The bigger issue is not Scholastica Ben-Sor
This controversy should not become a personal attack on Scholastica Ben-Sor.
She did not create the constitutional structure of Benue State.
She is an appointee working within an administration.
The responsibility ultimately belongs to the government that created the arrangement.
And the real issue is not whether Benue needs programmes for women, children and vulnerable people.
Of course it does.
The issue is whether those programmes need to be organised under an office whose constitutional existence is uncertain.
There is nothing wrong with a Governor appointing a Special Adviser on Women Affairs.
There is nothing wrong with government supporting women, children and vulnerable citizens.
There is nothing wrong with a Governor establishing administrative mechanisms to execute lawful programmes.
But there is a difference between creating a programme and creating an office.
And there is an even bigger difference between creating an office administratively and creating a public institution with public buildings, personnel and expenditure.
That difference deserves scrutiny.
The unanswered questions
Benue therefore has some straightforward questions to answer:
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What legal instrument establishes the Office of the First Lady of Benue State?
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Who formally appointed Scholastica Ben-Sor as Coordinator of that office?
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Is she functioning under her existing appointment as Special Adviser on Women Affairs, or is “Coordinator, Office of the First Lady” a separate appointment?
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What law or House of Assembly resolution provides for the office's personnel and remuneration?
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Who pays the staff attached to the office?
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Under which budget head are its operations funded?
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Who authorised and funded the newly commissioned office complex at Government House?
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Was the construction appropriated and procured in accordance with applicable state procurement rules?
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What happens to the office when Governor Alia leaves office?
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Will every future unmarried Governor be entitled to appoint his or her own “First Lady” coordinator and establish a similar structure?
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If the office is purely administrative, why does it carry the formal name “Office of the First Lady”?
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If it is a government office, where is the legislation or other legal instrument establishing it?
Those questions are more important than the argument over whether Mrs Christie Sam-Ode should have been chosen.
Because the Deputy Governor's wife was never constitutionally entitled to become First Lady either.
The real constitutional question is bigger.
If there is no First Lady, why does Benue now have an Office of the First Lady?
And if the answer is that the office is merely an administrative mechanism created by the Governor, then the next question becomes unavoidable:
How far can executive discretion go before an informal convention becomes a de facto public institution?
That is the precedent Benue is now setting.
And once a precedent is created in Government House, future Governors inherit it.
The issue, therefore, is not simply who is Benue's First Lady.
The issue is whether a Governor can create the machinery of an office that the law never created — and then pass that machinery on to whoever occupies Government House next.
**Benue may have solved the problem of having no First Lady.
But it may have created a much larger problem: who, exactly, gave the Governor the power to create the office?**
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